Yesterday, January 21, in Belgrade, plainclothes police officers detained several people, citizens of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Romania and Albania, in a Belgrade hotel and took them to the New Belgrade Police Department in an unmarked car. All of them are workers in the field of civil society, and among them is our colleague from the organization WHW from Zagreb, who deals with contemporary art. They came to our country to participate in the Erste Academy program that was held these days in Belgrade.
They were kept in the police station for several hours. During that time, they were questioned about their education, the faculties they graduated from, and the reasons for coming to Belgrade. After that, they were given a document in our language and the Cyrillic script that they were forced to sign even though most of them did not understand a word of the content. Colleagues from Croatia also emphasized that the police translated the document for them upon request. However, in that document, i.e. the decision stated that it was adopted “with the opinion of the state authority responsible for the protection of the security of the Republic of Serbia, which determined that the stay of the appointed citizen (…) represents an unacceptable security risk in the Republic of Serbia.”
By this same decision, those detained were given twenty-four hours to leave Serbia, and they were prohibited from entering our country for the next year.
We, the undersigned, call on the public to understand this event as a sign that they must no longer be tolerant of the actions of the rulers and to see in this act a proof of their panic under the pressure of a general social rebellion. The cowardly, illegal and vile treatment of colleagues from the civil sector from countries in our neighborhood is a dangerous attempt to strengthen the narrative about foreign agents, mercenaries and secret services whose intention is to intimidate the citizens of Serbia.
As a community of free and solidarity workers in culture, media and human rights, we are sending a message to all our colleagues around the world, and especially to our neighbors, that we will do our best to make sure this never happens again. We refuse to accept that the most noble values - cooperation, respect, solidarity and appreciation – which we promote together with a huge number of colleagues from the region, are discriminated against, punished, sanctioned, and our guests, associates and friends are detained, mistreated and thrown out of our country without any reason or explanation. There have been enough victims and traumas from the war-mongering nationalist policies of these same authorities, which during the entire nineties, as well as these last thirteen years, shamed us in front of the region and the world.
We ask the state of Serbia to apologize to all detained colleagues and their countries and to urgently cancel the shameful decisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS.
Association Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia and its members:
Service station for contemporary dance
Art Base
Simply put
Kiosk
Karkatag collective
Organization Practicable
Art Association of the University of Zrenjanin
Creative mentoring
Fakirs from the South
Animated echo
New optimism
Satibara movie
BUNT Belgrade’s artistic new territory
Association Space
Communication point
Crocodile
Culture
Orchestra Light
Bookscope
HopLa!
Rebel readers
Beldocs – International Documentary Film Festival
Multimedia Center Led Art
Context
Auropolis
CESK Center for Empirical Studies of Southeast European Culture
ArteQ
LICEULICE
Omen Teatar
Parnas
Pathos Theater
Studio 6 – collective for the promotion of contemporary music
The Confusion Association
Cirkusphere
TV Tick
POD Teatar
REX Cultural Center
Studio for multimedia art
Three groschen
Comic book world
Switch
Kuda.org
Village cultural center Markovac
Gifest
Other cultural organizations:
Remont NUA
Mixer
Center for cultural decontamination
U10 Art Collective
Stereovision
International Association of Art Critics AICA – Serbia section
“Living Upright” Center
Per.Art
Organizations supporting the initiative:
Građanske inicijative
Jelena Šantić Foundation
Autonomous Women’s Center
Youth Initiative for Human Rights
Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia
Slavko Ćuruvija Foundation
CRTA
Belgrade Center for Security Policy
Center for Contemporary Politics
Belgrade Center for Human Rights
Komitet pravnika za ljudska prava (YUCOM)
SHARE Foundation
RAINBOW
Partneri Srbija
KUPEK